Haiku Encounters: serendipitous connections
Haiku Encounters: serendipitous connections
HAIKU ENCOUNTERS is about looking for haiku poems that resonate with one another. This can be a way to gain new insights into both poems, and it follows naturally from the history of haiku as a form of linked poetry. The earliest haiku were the hokku, the 5-7-5 poems that were used to begin a linked poetry chain, where poets added 7-7 and 5-7-5 poems, each poem connecting with the preceding poem. In other words: haiku were created in order to connect. (For more about the fascinating tradition of linked poetry in Japan, see Lenore Mayhew's Monkey's Raincoat, and for Basho's pivotal role, see Hiroaki Sato's One Hundred Frogs, both available at the invaluable Haiku Foundation Digital Library.)
Haiku Encounters Solitaire. Here are two different ways to play solitaire online with all the materials ready to go: just click to play!
Two-Poem Encounter: You will see two haiku poems displayed at random. Do they resonate in some way? That might be by way of similarity, a common feature, or by a distinctive difference between them.
Four-Poem Encounter: This display gives you four poems, with more opportunities to hear a resonance. Can you find a good pair here? Two pair? A triple? Take your time to look for the different possible echoes that can occur in a set of four poems.
You can also play with your own poem cards. In fact, for a game like this, playing with your own cards is so much better because that way you already know that each of the poems in the deck has an important meaning for you. You can choose to lay out your cards in a set of two or three or four and, unlike the online version, you can choose to discard just one poem at a time, creating even more opportunities for connections. There are so many possible variations!
Here are two variations that I play with my own cards:
Pairs. This is a simple way to play!
I deal my cards, face-down, into four stacks.
Then I turn up the top card on each stack. Is there a good pair? I ponder the cards, reading out loud, looking for the best pair. When I find a good pair, I put those poems together in a new stack: this is my "pair stack" that I will review at the end of the game.
I then turn up new cards to replace the discards, so now I am looking at four poems again. Again, I look for a pair. If I find a pair, I put it in the "pair stack." If I am ever stuck and just nothing is resonating (this rarely happens), I take one of the cards and put it at the bottom of its stack, turning up a new card.
When I decide I am done (my poem cards are so numerous that I never get through all the cards!), I then pick up my "pair stack" and read through the poems in pairs.
Linked Poetry. This is how I create my own linked poetry (all 5-7-5, no 7-7).
I deal my cards, face-down, into four stacks.
Then I turn up the top card on each stack. Is there a good pair? I ponder the cards, reading out loud, looking for the best pair. I then take those cards and put them in the "linked" stack, face up.
I am now looking at 5 poems: the top poem in the "linked" stack, and the four poems.
Now I look for a poem that is a good pair with the top poem in the "linked" stack.
I then add that poem to the linked stack, and turn up a new card to replace the poem I just moved.
I look for another poem to play on the linked stack. If I am ever stuck, I can remove one (or more) of the four poems, putting it at the bottom of its stack.
When I am done, I review my linked poem! That means turning the "linked" stack upside down, and then reading the poems in order from the first poem through to the latest one I just added.
I read them the way Earl Miner presents linked poetry in his wonderful book, Japanese Linked Poetry (available at the astounding Internet Archive) reading each poem after the first poem, twice. That's because each poem has now become part of two different pairs: 1-2, and then 2-3, and then 3-4, and so on.
No, it's not exactly the same as traditional Japanese linked poetry, but it is very much in the spirit of linked poetry, and I always learn a lot whenever I play this game!
Haiku Encounters Multiplayer Zoom. There are also so many ways you play this game in Zoom, either using the 4 poems online or the 2 poems online, and/or with players having their own poem cards. I'll just suggest one possible variation here: creating a linked haiku poem using the Zoom chat. Here's how to play:
Each player will need to be looking at four haiku cards, either a random set of four poems for each round, or maybe they will be looking at their own poem cards.
The Game Leader's role is to get the linked poem started (just like a specially chosen hokku, a.k.a. haiku was used to start a linked poetry session). The Game Leader will also be responsible for calling on each player in order, making sure that each player gets to take their turn in each round.
The Game Leader selects a haiku poem to begin. They can either copy-and-paste the poem from the online version (include the author), or they can type the poem into the chat.
Then the Game Leader calls on a player to continue the poem. If the player has a poem to contribute, they paste or type the poem into the chat.
Don't do it as a reply; create a new chat item! (There will be too many poems to do this with nested replies.)
If you lose your line breaks after pasting into the Zoom chat (this happens sometimes), just quickly type a few blank spaces where the line breaks would go; after you have added those spaces, then you can safely post the poem.
People can add emojis to the poem posts, but don't post anything else in the chat; just let it be for the linked poetry.
If the player doesn't have a poem that fits, they pass that round.
The Game Leader then calls on the next player, and so on, with players contributing poems as new items in the chat.
Alternatively, instead of going from player to player in order, the Game Leader can simply ask if any player has a poem they want to contribute, with that player "raising their hand" in Zoom; the Game Leader then recognizes that person and tells them to put their poem into the chat. If multiple people raise their hands, the Game Leader should give priority to any player who has not contributed a poem so far.
Then, when everyone feels like the game is over, the Game Leader can call on players in turn to read the linked poem by starting at the top of the chat and working on down. Remember to read the poems in linked poem style, with each poem being read twice, once as the follow-up poem and once as the starter: 1-2, then 2-3, then 3-4, then 4-5 and so on. (Don't read the authors, but people will be able to see the authors' names in the chat panel.)
Haiku Encounters Multiplayer In-Person. There are also so many ways you can play with the haiku cards in person!
For example, if you want to do a linked poem together, it is even easier than in Zoom: instead of typing into the chat, each player just presents the Game Leader with the poem they are contributing to the linked verse. When the game is over, the Game Leader will have a stack of poems that "is" the linked poem. The Game Leader can start off by reading the first poem in the stack and then pass the stack to a player who then reads the first poem again with the second poem, then passing the stack to the next player who reads the second poem with the third poem, etc.